The Owen Gun War Crimes Part 2
The Owen Gun War Crimes Chapter Five Part Two
More than likely Evelyn Owen would have heard about the direct hit on the South Hallsville School, at Canning Town in the East End of London, where 400 civilians perished. However, it is not likely that Evelyn Owen would ever know the real details but the impact of this story would have seeped through and added to the unremitting worry of what happens when its our homes and our families. When it is Australia’s turn to enter the maelstrom?
3 D drawing with cut away to show working parts of The Owen Gun.
As this ‘Owen Gun’ story is a controversy of betrayal which impacted like the skittles on thousands of Australians, we have to examine what and who we blame for these tragedies that occur in war and affected so many. As calling it the ‘Peoples War” and their ‘Finest Hour’ does not cover the conscience once all the detail such as above are related.
Army Officers Who Opposed The Owen Gun:- Individually Responsible For Australian Losses Due To Lack Of Section Fire Power?
Yet who should carry the blame for these and similar disasters, are we not individually responsible for our own actions, even in war. The people blame the Germans, or blame Hitler, in Australia they blamed the Japanese or the Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo, or the Emperor of Japan Hirohito. The real blame of what caused the overall World War tragedy could have been truly laid somewhere entirely different. Others, maybe more bitter laid the blame at their own side as above the Councillor who lost the transport order. The overworked Balloon squadron failure to raise the Barrage Balloon, the Councils lack of railing on the Tube Station steps. Is it right that only the losers are held responsible for War Crimes and the winners give medals to those few whose guilt is much worse?
Throughout history the victors always hang the losers and write the history books.
Shouldn’t we ask? Who judges the winners for the war crimes of pride, sloth, inactivity, and sabotage who may not actually work for the enemy, but just as certainly due to greed and pride do not mind advancing their own careers by sending untold thousands to their early graves.
After World War Two the victors USA and the British Commonwealth realising that the massive improvements of communications made world leaders more accountable than ever before made the decision, to place the German officers and senior civil servants on public trial.
The Nuremberg trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, from 1945 to 1946, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, have shown that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, and was only dissuaded from this by talks with U.S. leaders later in the war.
In 1943, Tehran Conference, Roosevelt the Winner plans the Show Trials.
In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aghast, sarcastically joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill denounced the idea of “the cold blooded execution of soldiers who fought for their country.” However, he also stated that war criminals must pay for their crimes, and that in accordance with the Moscow Document which he himself had written, they should be tried at the places where the crimes were committed. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions “for political purposes.”
In 1945 the idea of an International Military Tribunal was unprecedented. Creating a forum to legitimately try enemy prisoners under a fair legal system had never been attempted, and many questioned whether World War II was the time to attempt it. The governments of the Allies and France believed that a trial, following an established legal system, was a better option than military execution without due process. Consequently, the IMT was formed to try Nazi war criminals.
The indictments were for:
Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace
Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace War crimes.
The general impression in people minds today over 60 years later is that the War Criminals were sentenced to death for organising the Death Camps, the despicable murder and treatment of prisoners, and in some cases that was the truth. So how could they be compared to Allied officers whose only guilt was the perceived advancement of their careers and promotion opportunities. The answer to that questions is that the majority of Germans that were tried were not Prison Camp SS guards, but were people that had never seen bloodshed. They were office workers, journalists, judges, architects, union leaders who had found themselves on the wrong side and whose nation had sanctified their behaviour, deplorable as it was.
The following information is supplied not to support them in any way, in fact personally if I was on the jury consider that death by hanging was too good for most of them. I only have some sympathy for Speer as he was condemned for organising slave labour but how one can judge this differently from the Allies use of Conscription and the ‘Bevan Boys’ enforced labour in British Coal Mines which lasted until well into the 1950s brings the trials into even more disrepute. This book is a history of the crimes that were committed against Australian soldiers who fought and died ill equipped, defenceless due to the misdeeds of their older superiors officers. To judge those people fairly we have to appreciate the state and times that the world was in and how war crimes were perceived during the 1940s by the people who lived through it.
German Newspaper report Nurenburg Trials but how many Germans died in US POW camps after the cessation of hostilities, some say a million from cold and starvation.
In the most famous trial, the first one, 24 of the senior German soldiers, diplomats, judges, senior ministers and businessmen. When the proceedings concluded, a dozen Nazis were sentenced to death by hanging, three were sentenced to life imprisonment, and four received sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years. Three others were found not guilty.
Martin Bormann Successor to Hess as Nazi Party Secretary. Sentenced to death in absentia.
Karl Dönitz . Sentenced to 10 years. Leader of the Kriegsmarine from 1943, succeeded Raeder. Initiator of the U-boat campaign. In evidence presented at the trial of Karl Dönitz on his orders to the U-boat fleet to breach the London Rules (sinking of merchant and passenger ship), Admiral Chester Nimitz stated that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war. Dönitz was found guilty of breaching the 1936 Second London Naval Treaty.
Hans Frank. Sentenced to Death. Reich Law Leader 1933-1945 and Governor-General of the General Government in occupied Poland 1939-1945.
Wilhelm Frick. Sentenced to Death. Hitler’s Minister of the Interior 1933-1943 and Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia 1943-1945.
Hans Fritzsche. Acquitted. Popular radio commentator, and head of the news division of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry.
Walther Funk. Life Imprisonment. Hitler’s Minister of Economics. Succeeded Schacht as head of the Reichsbank.
Hermann Göring. Sentenced to Death. Reichsmarschall, Commander of the Luftwaffe 1935-1945, Chief of the 4-Year Plan 1936-1945, and several departments of the SS. Second only to Hitler in the Nazi hierarchy during the last years of the war. Committed suicide the night before his execution.
Rudolf Hess. Sentenced to Life Imprisonment. Hitler’s deputy, flew to Scotland in 1941 in an attempt to broker a peace deal with Great Britain. After trial, committed to Spandau Prison; died in 1987.
Alfred Jodl. Sentenced to Death. Wehrmacht Generaloberst, Keitel’s subordinate and Chief of the O.K.W.’s Operations Division 1938-1945.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Sentenced to Death. Highest surviving SS-leader. Chief of RSHA 1943-45, the central Nazi intelligence organ. Also commanded many of the Einsatzgruppen and several concentration camps.
Wilhelm Keitel. Sentenced to Death . Head of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) 1938-1945.
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Major Nazi industrialist. C.E.O of Krupp A.G 1912-45. Medically unfit for trial (died January 16, 1950). The prosecutors attempted to substitute his son Alfried (who managed Krupp for his father during most of the war) in the indictment, but the judges rejected this as being too close to trial. Alfried was tried in a separate Nuremberg trial for his use of slave labour, thus escaping the worst notoriety and possibly death.
Robert Ley. Head of DAF, The German Labour Front. Committed Suicide on 25 October 1945, before the trial began.
Baron Konstantin von Neurath. Sentenced to15 years. Minister of Foreign Affairs 1932-1938, succeeded by Ribbentrop. Later, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia 1939-43. Resigned in 1943 due to dispute with Hitler.
Franz von Papen. Acquitted Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and Vice-Chancellor under Hitler in 1933-1934. Ambassador to Austria 1934-38 and ambassador to Turkey 1939-1944. Although acquitted at Nuremberg, von Papen was reclassified as a war criminal in 1947 by a German de-Nazification court, and sentenced to eight years’ hard labour.
Erich Raeder. Life Imprisonment. Commander In Chief of the Kriegsmarine from 1928 until his retirement in 1943, succeeded by Dönitz.
Joachim von Ribbentrop. Sentenced to Death . Ambassador-Plenipotentiary 1935-1936. Ambassador to the United Kingdom 1936-1938. Nazi Minister of Foreign Affairs 1938-1945.
Alfred Rosenberg. Sentenced to Death. Racial theory ideologist. Later, Minister of the Eastern Occupied Territories 1941-1945.
Fritz Sauckel. Sentenced to Death. Gauleiter of Thuringia 1927-1945. Plenipotentiary of the Nazi slave labor program 1942-1945.
Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Acquitted. Prominent banker and economist. Pre-war president of the Reichsbank 1923-1930 & 1933-1938 and Economics Minister 1934-1937.
Baldur von Schirach Sentenced to 20 years. Head of the Hitlerjugend from 1933 to 1940, Gauleiter of Vienna 1940-1943.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart Sentenced to Death Instrumental in the Anschluss and briefly Austrian Chancellor 1938. Deputy to Frank in Poland 1939-1940. Later, Reich Commissioner of the occupied Netherlands 1940-1945.
Albert Speer. Sentenced to 20 Years. Hitler’s favourite architect and close friend, and Minister of Armaments from 1942. In this capacity, he was ultimately responsible for the use of slave labourers from the occupied territories in armaments production.
Julius Streicher Sentenced to Death. Gauleiter of Franconia 1922-1940. Publisher of the weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer.
The death sentences were carried out 16 October 1946 by hanging using the standard drop method instead of long drop. The executioner was John C. Woods
This was just the beginning Albert Pierrepoint fame due to his family dynasty of hangman, was disappointed, as Nurenberg was in the American sector he did not have the opportunity to utilise his preferred long drop method in the most publicised trial. However he still managed to hang 200 from the subsequent war crime trials held in the British sector. This did not count the subsequent 1600 US trials and the Russian and French sector trials. Albert Pierrepoint also won the honour of hanging William Joyce, (nicknamed Lord Haw Haw) for Treason. He had committed the crime of radio broadcasting for the Germans. It was a rather dubious sentence as Joyce had been born in New York and never naturalised as British, but the mood of the times was very severe.
William Joyce, nicknamed 'Lord Haw Haw' pictured after his capture. His crime was radio broadcasting. He would not be smiling for the camera if he knew he was going to be hanged for Treason.
Under the wartime legislation many spies or other (as information has still not been authenticated and released) were disposed of at the Tower of London and buried on Tower Green without trial. Even an Admiral of the Fleet, Admiral Sir Barry Domville ( Book title Admiral to Cabin Boy) ex Chief of Naval Intelligence, whose crime was to be a leader of a right wing political group was jailed without trial for most of the war. Thousands of others, whose crime was that they disagreed with the war against Germany and saw the real enemy as Communist Russia were also interred without trial. So if Adolf Hitler scientist had made the atomic bomb first and the war had gone the other way the grounds for War Crime trials would have been present. The difference being that the Germans and Japanese would not have seen any reason to have expensive time consuming show trials, and would have disposed of their opposite numbers quietly with no fuss.
Although the International Military Tribunal had its flaws, it at least provided the Nazi defendants with a modicum of justice by virtue of the simple fact that they were allowed a trial. The Allies overcame the urge to indiscriminately execute every prisoner they took, and instead decided to subject them to the rule of law. Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as “crimes” after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of “victors’ justice”. The undoubted flaws rightly continue to trouble the thoughtful.
Chief Justice of the United States Harlan Fiske Stone called the Nuremberg trials a fraud. “(Chief US prosecutor) Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” he wrote. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”
The main Soviet judge, Nikitchenko, had taken part in Stalin’s show trials of 1936-1938.
One of the charges, brought against Keitel, Jodl, and Ribbentrop included conspiracy to commit aggression against Poland in 1939. The Secret Protocols of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939, proposed the partition of Poland between the Germans and the Soviets (which was subsequently executed in September 1939); however, Soviet leaders were not tried for being part of the same conspiracy. Instead, the Tribunal falsely proclaimed the Secret Protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact to be a forgery. Moreover, Allied Powers Britain and Soviet Union were not tried for preparing and conducting the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran and the Winter War against Finland, respectively.
The Judges, Well at least they got a Trial even if they did not get a Jury.
As the London Charter definition of what constituted a crime against humanity was unknown when many of the crimes were committed, it could be argued to be a retrospective law, in violation of the principles of prohibition of ex post facto laws and the general principle of penal law were ignored.
The trials were conducted under their own rules of evidence; the indictments were created ex post facto and were not based on any nation’s law; the ‘tu quoque’ defence was removed. Which means the defence of proving that your accuser is as guilty as yourself. It is sometimes referred to as ‘The You Too’ defence and some claim the entire spirit of the assembly was “victor’s justice”. The Charter of the International Military Tribunal permitted the use of normally inadmissible “evidence.” Article 19 specified that “The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence… and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value”. Article 21 of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) Charter stipulated:
“The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof. It shall also take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United Allied Nations, including acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and the records and findings of military and other Tribunals of any of the United Allied Nations”. This style of law which was quite foreign to English law principles has now pervaded the Tribunals set up in Australia to persecute the State Anti-Discrimination legislation.
The ‘You Too Defence’ Had To Be Ignored. As All Sides Are Always As Guilty. All Covered Up The Truth.
One of the famous examples of accuse your enemy of what you are guilty of occurred during the trial.
The chief Soviet prosecutor submitted false documentation in an attempt to indict defendants for the murder of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. However, the other Allied prosecutors refused to support the indictment and German lawyers promised to mount an embarrassing defence. No one was charged nor found guilty at Nuremberg for the Katyn Forest massacre. In 1990, the Soviet government acknowledged that the Katyn massacre was carried out, not by the Germans, but by the Soviet secret police.
Freda Utley, in her 1949 book “The High Cost of Vengeance” charged the court with amongst other things double standards. She pointed to the Allied use of civilian forced labour, and deliberate starvation of civilians in the occupied territories. She also noted that General Rudenko, the chief Soviet prosecutor, after the trials became commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. (After the fall of East Germany the bodies of 12,500 Soviet era victims were uncovered at the camp, mainly “children, adolescents and elderly people.”) That was why the ‘You Too’ defence had to be ignored.
All of the above also applied to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals and again in those trials the most popular defence was, ‘I was just following orders’ .
If the perpetrators, of the Owen Gun War Crimes, whose names will appear in the chapters of evidence to come were challenged and compared with those who stood trial at Nuremberg almost to a man they would appear to be shocked, horrified at the comparison. Like a chorus with all their modern day sympathisers they would chant in unison that they were ‘only following orders’. Only one man at the very top would not have been able to use that defence, but the Germans and Japanese used that defence. Officers in Australia procrastinating the implantation of the Owen Gun could not have used that defence as in the German and Japanese instances. As German and Japanese officers would have been shot for disobeying orders, where in the Australian context there was no formal order and the death penalty was never threatened. We hear that defence in the 21st Century everyday from our public servants, ‘I’m only doing my job’. ‘I know its wrong, but my family has to eat’, ‘I’m only following orders’,'Everybody has a mortgage to pay,’ from local government officials to the police.
The Warrior Code. “I’m Only Following Orders”.
In The Art of War, written during the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu argued that it was a commander’s duty to ensure that his subordinates conducted themselves in a civilised manner during an armed conflict. The trial of Peter von Hagenbach by an ad hoc tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire in 1474, was the first “international” recognition of commanders’ obligations to act lawfully. Hagenbach was put on trial for atrocities committed during the occupation of Breisach, found guilty of war crimes and beheaded. Since he was convicted for crimes “he as a knight was deemed to have a duty to prevent,” Hagenbach defended himself by arguing that he was only following orders. It is seen as the first trial based on this principle where the defence of following orders was put forward. Of course in international law that defence fails.
The defence was most famously employed during the Nuremberg Trials, after which the Principle is named and all that used it were condemned if not to death, to long prison sentences.
Before the end of World War II, the Allies suspected such a defence might be employed, and issued the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which specifically stated that this was not a valid defence against charges of war crimes.
Thus, under Nuremberg Principle IV, “defence of superior orders” is not a defence for war crimes, although it might influence a sentencing authority to lessen the penalty.
Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl and other defendants of the Nuremberg trials unsuccessfully used the defence during their trials.
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility. Based on this principle international law developed the concept of individual criminal liability for war crimes which resulted in many executions of Germans and Japanese soldiers.
At the Nurenberg Trial which the winning Allied countries tried the losers of World War Two, the German almost to a man blamed their superior or Adolf Hitler and used the defence that they were only carrying out orders. This was dismissed by the Trial Judges and they found that under ‘Common Law’, every man is responsible for his actions, that they could have chosen to run away rather than commit war crimes.
The ‘Common law ‘argument against the Nuremberg defence is that if the individual knows (’mens rea’) or is aware that his actions are against the laws of humanity, then they have the guilt and should be punished. Of course on that basis all warfare of any description could be classified as actions against the laws of humanity but then International Law takes into account the Warrior Code.
The customary law of war exists, and has existed, since time immemorial; the use of treaty to codify what is allowed and what is prohibited is merely its modern expression; just as the common law in the English-speaking nations has forbidden murder. Common law murder has been under the pain of death, since its inception, without a word on the statute-books proscribing murder in many of the common law countries up to the present day. The idea that there are certain expectations of those practising the profession of arms among the civilized nations has been ingrained in many cultures—including those of Europe, East Asia even Bushido, the warrior code of Japan, the Middle East for example Saladin, the Arabian/Islamic exemplar of knightly virtue, respected and honoured across the battle-lines by the Crusaders, and other civilizations. In particular, the culture of Europe gave rise to the concept of chivalry, the code of honour regulating the conduct of knights, men-at-arms, and in later days, in more modern forms, soldiers. Traditionally, in Europe and elsewhere, the obligation of the warrior is to levy war upon all those who bear arms against him, his brothers-in-arms, his commander, and his nation, using whatever means at his disposal are necessary and honourable for the task, and not using those which are dishonourable or perfidious, but in so doing, to save and to defend the innocent, the weak, and the helpless; to bring succour to the wounded, comfort to the dying; to spare from the rigours of war those who do not present a threat, not bearing arms against him; to give quarter, and to treat with humanity and military dignity the enemy soldier who has yielded, or is incapacitated; and, above all, to protect women and children from the sword.
The idea that a warrior owes a duty not just to his nation, or his army, but also to his common humanity is a concept as old as civilization itself is. Over the millennia, civilization has remembered with respect those warriors who were courageous in battle and merciful to those they defeated, regardless of whose banner under which they fought, while history regards with infamy those warriors, regardless of their military success, who willingly discarded the very honour and respect that they may have earned in battle through their atrocities committed upon civilians or cruelties visited upon vanquished foes. No warrior has been regarded as a man of courage for slaughtering of the weak or innocent, for his pillages or sacks, or for brutalities and barbarities he visited upon his foes; therein lies no honour or glory, only senseless cruelty. This indicates that just as the law against murder in the common-law nations is established not by statute, but by history, custom, the human condition, and by being immanent in Nature, so too is the law of war, and so too has it always been.
Kevin Smith's book 'The Owen Gun Files' makes continual excuses for Australian Army Officers and attempts to blame others for their own guilt.
Why Were Those Responsible for Slaughtering the Weak Not Put on Trial in Australia?
When the Australian Officers knowing that their countrymen were in dire need of additional section fire power yet purposely with forethought and planning delayed the manufacture of the Owen Gun. Those who committed written sabotage against their own men, whose only excuse could be to advance their personal careers and promotion could not use any of the Nurenberg defences and even if they did by precedent they would have been condemned, all the same. While they pontificated, battalions of young men with six weeks training with broomstick were being sent to fight an Army that had been in constant battle practice since 1931. The young men went willingly believing that their superiors were doing their bit to equip them, thousands needlessly went to their deaths or Japanese Prison Camps because they did not have enough firepower to prevent the Japanese from encircling their defensive positions then rushing in on them. Those officers knew the problem and yet kept delaying. Instead of putting them on trial they promoted them one culprit up to Field Marshal. Books have been written in their defence such as ‘The Owen Gun Files’ by Kevin Smith which raises every excuse to shift the blame. Those young Australians needlessly killed were an atrocity just as important as any discussed at Nuremberg and Tokyo and those officers should have stood on trial for those deaths winners or losers “tu quoque” or “You Too”. As these War Criminals were not the skittles of war they were not the overworked councillors who lose the paperwork or the Barrage Balloon operators who are exhausted in a battle zone, they sat at home and effectively disarmed Australians who had to stop lead with their bodies so that they could polish their backsides in an Army office in Australia. Kevin Smith in the “The Owen Gun Files” claims that they were following orders, just doing there jobs. He writes as and sounds as a public servant sounds remote and clinical and blames everyone else. As usual William Shakespeare’s uses the pen to cut words sharper then any sword to apportion the reckoned blame, for all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle Act IV Scene 1 The English Camp at Agincourt. The Welsh discuss the blame of war.
KING HENRY V
” me thinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s company; his cause being
just and his quarrel honourable.
WILLIAMS
That’s more than we know.
BATES
Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
KING HENRY V
So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the
imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king’s laws in now the king’s quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for they which are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained: and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.
WILLIAMS
‘Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it.
William Shakespeare’s says it all with the words of King Henry “ every subjects soul is his own”, “wash every mote out of his conscience.” Those officers “have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder”, and as we present the evidence against the accused you may also believe that they should have shared the same reward as the German officers at Nuremberg.
Next Edition The Owen Gun War Crime Trial, Part Three.
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